The 2nd Annual Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States — The 2003 Edition

Once again this year, Right Wing News has put together a list of the most annoying people on the left. Oh and when I say “annoying,” I mean REALLY ANNOYING. We’re talking about fingers on a chalk board, crying babies in a movie theater, the neighbor’s dog barking at 3 AM, levels of pure left-wing annoyance. So get ready, get set, and go check out the “The 2nd Annual Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States — The 2003 Edition”.

20) The Dixie Chicks

The Dixie Chicks originally got in trouble for trashing George. W. Bush at a London concert. When word got back to the states about what they said, predictably a lot of their fans got angry, particularly in their home state of Texas. Some country stations pulled the Dixie Chicks off their playlists, some of their fans tore into them, threw away their CDS, etc, etc.

Now all of this was no big deal and wouldn’t have merited their inclusion on this list, except for the Dixie Chicks shameless and incessant milking of the whole situation. You could hardly turn on the news without listening to someone acting as if a few radio stations refusing to play “Landslide” was the equivalent of sending the whole group to a Siberian gulag. Suddenly the Dixie Chicks were everywhere promoting their #1 album “Home” and complaining about having their dissent squashed. In fact, they got so much attention that they even turned down a request to be interviewed by the “Associated Press” at one point. Their whole whinefest culminated with an appearance naked on the front of “Entertainment Weekly”…

If getting endless TV appearances and fawning magazine interviews is the price of having your dissent squashed in America, then sign me up to be squashed…seriously, squash my dissent, squash it!!!!!

Defining quote:: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.”: — Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks at a London concert.

19) Ibrahim Hooper

Some of you are probably wondering who the heck Ibrahim Hooper is and why he’s included. Hooper is the jarring spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. While claiming that CAIR is a moderate group, Hooper relentlessly attacks anyone who goes after radical Islam as “hatemongers, “anti-Muslim bigots,” & “Islamophobes”. Listening to Hooper is like a hearing a slightly more coherent version of Yasser Arafat who took a “Victimology 101″ course from Jesse Jackson. So if you don’t know who he is yet, be glad of it.

18) Ramsey Clark

If you hear about an anti-war rally, someone calling for the President to be impeached, or if any group somewhere in America is fighting to protect dictators and their way of life, Ramsey Clark will be there. Clark is a fringe whacko who was the US Attorney General in the Johnson administration. Today, he uses that more than 30-year-old title to trick people into paying attention to him until they figure out he’s from the fever swamps of the lunatic left. Once enough people figure out he’s that “far left-wing fruitloop” instead of some credible figure, he should blessedly fade into the obscurity he so richly deserves.

Defining Quote:: “The Christian Church overwhelmingly — there are exceptions — who choose to call Mohammed a terrorist. They could call Jesus a terrorist too. I mean, he was pretty tough on money lenders a time or two.”: — Ramsey Clark

17) Paul Krugman

Paul Krugman is the Noam Chomsky of economics. Like Chomsky, Krugman uses his credibility in another field to give people the impression that he’s a competent political commentator. However, his political screeds in the New York Times usually come off as slightly unhinged and gloomy, sort of like the deadite who was stuck in the basement in “Evil Dead 2″. This year, Krugman predictedSARS might very well derail the economic recovery, bemoaned theconservative bias: of the mainstream press from the staunchly liberal and incredibly influential New York Times, bizarrely claimed that Donald Luskin was stalking him, and went so far as to blame the Bush administration for Malaysian moonbat Mahathir Mohamad’s anti-semitic remarks about Jews ruling the world. All of this from perhaps the most highly regarded & influential left-wing columnist on the planet.

Defining Pics (The Covers Of Krugman’s New Book In The US & UK):

16) Mark Morford

Morford is perhaps the most rabid & incoherent columnist on the left. His work is a mixture of feral hatred of the right, babbling, and new age nonsense that one would expect to hear from a 15 year old who spent his summer listening to Noam Chomsky & Deepak Chopra books on tape. The upside to Mark Morford is that he gives hope to all talentless hacks who hope to one day get a job writing columns in a major newspaper.

Defining Quote:: “The dank and stained bingo room in the Sands, in Reno. This is exactly what is happening in this country. This is what we have become….Because it is but a short little spiritual/psychological leap to note how we all have our bingo rooms and we all feel that soft whooshing, that sinister tug from the demons of mass cultural stasis and inertia and noxious television and poisonous junk food and Wal-Mart and BushCo squinting and trying to look all fierce and manly when he can’t even pronounce the name of the latest country we’re about to massacre.

15) Al Franken

Al Franken is an immature, profane, & obnoxious jerk who gets off on grinding on people’s nerves. Among other things, Franken challenged National Review columnist Rich Lowry to a fight, went on an expletive filled rant about Brit Hume, and called Karl Rove “human filth” in his last book. Franken is like the cross, bitter, and slightly demented uncle who escapes from the attic of the Democratic party to go yell at the neighbors every so often.

Defining Quote:: “…How big an [bleep] Brit Hume is. And how shameless, how [bleep] shameless these people are. These people are so [bleep] shameless. They are shameless.”

14) Senator John Kerry

There are many irritating things about the haughty, “French looking,” Senator from “Taxachustes”. His wife the ketchup shrew, riding a motorcycle around and dropping the F-bomb to Rolling Stone in a transparent attempt to look hip, and his continuing insistence that we have no allies with us in Iraq even after brave men and women from Britain, Italy, Spain, Poland, the Ukraine, & Denmark have died over there helping us.

But the most grating thing about Kerry is the way he works the fact that he went to Vietnam into every conversation. You could be talking to him about snow cones and he’d say, “They didn’t have any snow cones in Vietnam”. If you brought up the Redskins, he’d tell you, “I had a friend back in Nam who was a big Redskins fan”. Even if you told him to talk about anything except Vietnam he’d say, “So I can’t talk about Vietnam huh? No Vietnam at all…hmmm. Wow, without talking about my service in Vietnam, I have nothing to talk about”.

Now here’s the real kicker; when Kerry actually got back from Vietnam he PROTESTED against the war and claimed to have thrown his medals over the White House fence (yes, he lied). Then later on in 1992, Kerry defended Bill Clinton from Vietnam vet Bob Kerrey by saying,

“I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserted into the campaign, and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way… What saddens me most is that Democrats, above all those who shared the agonies of that generation, should now be re-fighting the many conflicts of Vietnam in order to win the current political conflict of a presidential primary.”

Defining quote:: “I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, ‘I’m against everything’? Sure. Did I expect george bush to f*ck it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did.”: — John Kerry in Rolling Stone

13) Tim Robbins

Tim Robbins used his celebrity status to get coverage of his seemingly endless whining, moaning, and complaining about the war in Iraq. But then, when a few barbs got hurled back in his direction, he started whinging incessantly to a sympathetic press about a “chill wind” blowing. Yes, America is all about free speech…for Tim Robbins…not for you little peons who are criticizing him. Your job is to shut-up, listen to Robbins babble on about the war, and then go see his twisted: anti-war play: which: “portrays journalists as Pentagon puppets, U.S. soldiers as thieves and killers of innocent women and children, and the Bush cabinet as war mongers willing to start a war to escape the negative publicity of the Enron scandal.”

Defining Quote:: “A message is being sent through the White House and its allies in talk radio…[that] if you oppose this administration, there can and will be ramifications. Every day, the airwaves are filled with warnings, veiled and unveiled threats, spewed invective and hatred directed at any voice of dissent.”: — Tim Robbins explains how people like him are being terrified into silence in a speech at the NATIONAL PRESS CLUB.

12) The Democratic Underground

The Democratic Underground is like the unconscious id of the Democratic Party. If you want to see what the left is like when no one is looking, there is no better place to go than the DU. Don’t bother posting though, because they ruthlesslydelete and ban: everyone who doesn’t tow the party line. All the better though, because the Democratic Underground is such a great source of material that everyone from RWN, to: Andrew Sullivan, to: Rush Limbaugh: has taken to quoting them. That not a big surprise when you can find whole threads full of people at the DU saying…

Defining Quote:: “GI Joe loves Bush and GI’s from Florida even bragged about voiting for him more than once. Well, I look at it this way: there is more than one way to get your f*cking brains blown out for your country. The generals have warned how ultimately bloody and bogged down this fairy tale sweep of Iraq in 3 days and 15 minutes is going to be. Hopefully as these repuke loving GI’s die and are attacked by gas/chemicals, etc., the result will be a turning against Bush here in the Homeland by the brain dead public. Maybe by the deaths of these GI Neandethals who think that Bush and the repukes are God, “we the people” will be able to have the ammo to overthrow this Nazi regime. Too bad these guys can’t take a hint from their brass and understand that they are being used, their safety disregarded, simply for the advancement of corporate America. But if they can’t figure out what their brass already knows and keep up these insance cheers for the repukes and hisses for the Dems, maybe their deaths will return this country to the people as they realize that Bush’s dream team is simply a nightmare of old, sick, has beens.”: — From DU poster: Starpass

11) Cruz Bustamante

Just think about how annoying Cruz Bustamante had to be to lose the recall election in California. He was the only viable democratic candidate in one of the most liberal states in America and running against a split Republican ticket which featured Arnold Schwarzenegger who was being flayed in the press as a serial groper. Yet, when it was all said and done, Schwarzenegger pulled 47.7% of the vote, Bustamante had 32.5%, and Tom McClintock even pulled 13.2% of the vote that would have likely gone to the “Governator” had McClintock not been in the race.

So why did Bustamante lose so badly? Aside from his banal personality, his shady use of Indian casino money, and his support of driver’s licenses for illegal aliens, Bustamante refused to denounce MEChA, a politically correct, Latino version of the KKK that wants to return the Southern part of the United States to Mexico. Anyone who endorses a group like MEChA isn’t qualified to be a dogcatcher, much less Governor of California.

Defining Quote:: “If that had been my daughter, it wouldn’t have taken an election to resolve it. It would have been up close and personal. We would have taken care of it real quick.”: — Doughboy Cruz Bustamante gives everyone a good chuckle by talking about how he’d whomp Arnold Schwarzenegger good if “the Terminator” ever groped his daughter.

10) Congressman James Moran

I’m sure that Jews all across the planet really appreciated it when Congressman James Moran had a Mahathir Mohamad moment and played into the whole “Jews are really the power behind the scenes” fantasy that so many ignorant people buy into…

Defining Quote:: “If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq we would not be doing this.

…The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should.”

Yes, if only those Jews would use their “Mutant Jew powers,” “Jedi Jew tricks,” or “Jewish mind control rays,” to get W. to change his mind. What a chucklehead…

9) The Anti-War Protests

Now, I know the anti-war protests as a whole probably shouldn’t qualify for this article, but how could I leave out a bunch of empty-headed goofs parading around in the street carrying giant puppet heads and frantically waving “No war for oil” signs? They were angry, noisy, & incoherent, yet they could never figure out why a bunch of radical idiots doing street theater and burning American flags at a rally organized by Communists never changed anyone’s mind. On the upside, the were so horrifying to the American people that the President’s approval rating usually got a little bump every time they had another big rally, so they weren’t all bad.

Defining Pic:

8) Senator Patty Murray

In one of the most breath-takingly stunning displays of ignorance and naivete imaginable, Senator Patty Murray gave perhaps the dumbest explanation for Osama Bin Laden’s popularity in the Muslim world anyone had ever heard while simultaneously ignoring the truly unbelievable amount of aid and charity the US pours into the rest of the world when she said…

Defining Quote:: “We’ve got to ask, why is this man (Osama bin Laden) so popular around the world? Why are people so supportive of him in many countries … that are riddled with poverty? He’s been out in these countries for decades, building schools, building roads, building infrastructure, building day care facilities, building health care facilities, and the people are extremely grateful. We haven’t done that. How would they look at us today if we had been there helping them with some of that rather than just being the people who are going to bomb in Iraq and go to Afghanistan?”

7) Former Presidents Bill Clinton & Jimmy Carter

There used to be a time in this country when former Presidents had enough respect for the office to try not to undercut the guy currently in the White House. But these days, you can hardly turn on Fox or CNN without seeing Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton on the screen doing everything humanly possible to undermine the President’s foreign policy. That’s particularly ironic since both Carter and Clinton floundered around like mastodons in a tar pit whenever there was a difficult crisis overseas during their administrations.

In fact, a lot of the problems W. is dealing with today are left over from the Carter and Clinton administrations. Carter stood back and allowed the Shah of Iran to be toppled, which allowed a group of terrorist supporting, nuclear bomb developing crazies who are still giving us headaches today to get into office. He also came across as so weak to the Soviets that they invaded Afghanistan. That set in motion a chain of events that led to Osama Bin Laden forming Al-Qaeda and the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan.

In Clinton’s case, he actually declined an offer from Sudan to turn over Osama Bin Laden to him in 1996 and engaged in such weak responses to threats (including the now infamous Black Hawk Down incident) that Bin Laden actually came to believe that he could defeat the United States with terrorism. Clinton also twice ignored provocation from Saddam Hussein that should have led to war — his assassination attempt on former President George Bush Sr. and Saddam’s refusal to let the inspectors do their jobs in 1998.

Clinton and Carter even teamed up on the 1994 deal with North Korea that led to the US sending them a vast array goodies in return for an empty & unverifiable North Korean promise to stop working on their nuclear program. Unsurprisingly — well to anyone except liberals — the North Koreans later admitted that they had been lying all along.

Now that George W. Bush is actually cleaning up all their faux pas, foul-ups, and messes, foreign policy “experts” Slick Willie and the Peanut are publicly giving him “advice” at every opportunity. Hey, George Bush needs their foreign policy “expertise” like a daycare center needs Michael Jackson to do private counseling.

Defining Quote:: “Had I been elected to a second term, with the prestige and authority and influence and reputation I had in the region, we could have moved to a: final solution.”: — Jimmy Carter shows his skill at foreign policy as he describes making peace between the Israelis and Palestinians

6) Peter Arnett

Even as the United States was in the midst of perhaps the most successful military invasion in the history of mankind, the US press obsessively portrayed the whole exercise as a large scale catastrophe. Yes, the US military may have been slicing through whole Iraqi divisions with no losses, but the viewers at home were being treated to Vietnam comparisons and quagmire mongering.

The worst example of this was Peter Arnett. He actually went on IRAQI TV during the war and spouted pro-Saddam propaganda. He even went so far as to try to give HELPFUL ADVICE to the Iraqis. You were almost waiting for him to pick up an AK-47 and a suicide belt and ask them to point him towards the “Yankee imperialists”. Shortly thereafter, Arnett was deservedly fired by NBC.

Defining Quote:: “In the interview, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing.

He said the United States is reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, “and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan.”

“Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces,” Arnett said during the interview broadcast by Iraq’s satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt.

Arnett said it is clear that within the United States there is growing opposition to the war and a growing challenge to President Bush about the war’s conduct.

“Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States,” he said. “It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments.”: — A description of Arnett’s comments from the WAPO.

5) Jayson Blair

New York Times reporter Jayson Blair: got busted: making things up in “at least 36 of the 73 articles” he wrote for the Times. I mean, we’re talking about a guy sitting in a New York bar writing up articles that had him live on site in WEST VIRGINIA here. Blair’s implosion was so huge that it not only damaged the credibility of the New York Times, it actually damaged newspapers across America. After all, if a screw-up like Blair could get away with just making things up left and right at the premier newspaper on the planet, wasn’t it entirely possible there were dozens and dozens of Jayson Blairs doing the same thing all over the country?

Then to top it all off, Blair who pretty obviously took full advantage of the New York Times’ diversity program to keep moving up in the paper despite what the Times admits was a horrible record, made a complete jackass of himself by saying things like this…

Defining Quote:: “They’re all so smart, but I was sitting right under their nose fooling them. If they’re all so brilliant and I’m such an affirmative action hire, how come they didn’t catch me?”

4) Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur

If there was one single moment in 2003 that perfectly captured the whole “what the bloody hell is wrong with the left” vibe, it was Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur saying that Osama Bin Laden & company were “very similar” to the revolutionaries who fought for our freedom while the rest of the left either ignored or defended her comments. Who in their right mind looks at people like Ethan Allen, George Washington, & John Paul Jones and goes, “Boy, they sure do remind me of Al-Qaeda”? The answer to that if you live in Toledo, Ohio is “Your Congresswoman”.

Defining Quote:: “One could say that Osama bin Laden and these non-nation-state fighters with religious purpose are very similar to those kind of atypical revolutionaries that helped to cast off the British crown.”

3) Howard Dean

Ah, no list of annoying liberals for 2003 would be complete without talking the “vitriolic Vermonter,” the man who will probably be the Democrats’ candidate for President in 2004. Dean has risen to the top of the Democrats’ short list of candidates by being the angriest, most liberal, most anti-war candidate who Dems perceive as having a chance to actually win. In fact, Dean has moved so far to the left, with such success, that he has actually sucked the rest of the party’s candidates over in his direction like a left-wing blackhole. But despite all that, Dean is already setting the stage to try to run as a MODERATE — albeit a tax raising, civil union loving, anti-war on terrorism moderate, but still a MODERATE — in the general election if he wins the nomination.

Trying to pick one “defining quote” out for Dean is a real chore. Keep in mind that we’re talking about a guy who apparently believes the: Soviet Union still exists, who keeps floating the theory that: Bush may have known: 9/11 was going to happen, who doesn’t want to “take sides” between our Israeli friends and the pro-terrorist Palestinians who hate us, and who said the following about Saddam Hussein, “We got rid of him. I suppose that’s a good thing.” In fact, there were so many great Howard Dean quotes, one defining quote just wasn’t enough…

Defining Quote:: “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks”: & then a few days later: “I think the Confederate flag is a racist symbol.”: — Howard Dean, apparently courting what he sees as the racist vote.

Defining Quote:: “I think in general the ends do not justify the means.”: — Howard Dean after we blew away Uday & Qusay Hussein.

2) Michael Moore

Michael Moore is perhaps the most beloved figure of the American left. His books sell like wildfire, his every utterance is repeated with glee, and boy do they luuuuvvvvveeee it when he goes after Bush. Yet,

He’s delusional…

“There is no terrorist threat in this country. This is a lie. This is the biggest lie we’ve been told.”

Paranoid…

“The Patriot Act is the first step. “Mein Kampf” — “Mein Kampf” was written long before Hitler came to power. And if the people of Germany had done something early on to stop these early signs, when the right-wing, when the extremists such as yourself, decide that this is the way to go, if people don’t speak up against this, you end up with something like they had in Germany. I don’t want to get to that point.”

“I think the United States, I think our government knows where (Bin Laden) is and I don’t think we’re going to be capturing him or killing him any time soon.”

Eaten up with hatred for Bush…

“I want him [Bush] paraded in handcuffs outside a police house as a common criminal because I don’t know if there’s a greater crime than taking people to war based on a lie. I’ve never seen anything like Bush and his people. They truly hate our constitution, our rights and liberties. They have no shame in fighting for their corporate sponsors.”

There’s lots more where came from. But, I find this last quote to be especially apropos…well, if you apply it to the people reading Moore’s books.

Defining Quote:: “(Americans) are possibly the dumbest people on the planet … in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug pr*cks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance. We don’t know about anything that’s happening outside our country. Our stupidity is embarrassing.’: — Michael Moore shows his contempt for his fellow citizens while in Germany.

1) Ted Rall

It is a truly herculean task to defeat Michael Moore in a “most annoying” contest, but Ted Rall, a Marxist who does cartoons for the New York Times and writes columns for Yahoo, is certainly up for it. Just consider that Rall certainly doesn’t support our troops..

“(S)upporting our troops while they’re fighting an immoral and illegal war is misguided and wrong.”

Here’s his idea of what political discourse in America should be like…

“Democratic leaders ought to select their nominee in a smoke-filled room, call off the expensive and divisive primary process and order all other comers to stand down. Forget the union rallies, the badges and the buttons–whoever wins the nomination should invest every dime he can raise on the cruelest TV attack ads this country has ever seen.

“The thing is, we don’t really have to win. Losing the Vietnam War sucked, but not fighting it in the first place would have been smarter. Losing to Third Worlders in PJs led Americans to decades of relative humility, self-examination and taking the moral high ground in conflicts such as Haiti and Kosovo.”

And to top it all off, Rall wrote a whole column from the perspective of an: “Iraqi Resistance”: fighter that comes across as Rall’s own personal murder fantasy.

Put it all together and you have the most annoying liberal in America for 2003, by a left toe…

Defining Quote:: “…In an ideal world, American consumers could be convinced to do the right thing through an appeal to logic with public service messages like the “What Would Jesus Drive?” TV campaign, but the kind of people who would buy a car that increases the risk to other motorists in an accident can’t be reasoned with. They’re selfish and stupid. It’s unfortunate that drivers must worry that their SUVs are being targeted by insulting stickers and Molotov cocktails, but one thing’s for sure: It couldn’t be happening to a more deserving group of people.”: — Ted Rall winks at ecoterrorism